VIDEO LINK: Exchange between Reconnecting America President John Robert Smith and Congressman John Mica during a US House Transportation hearing on Capital Hill. youtube/watch?v=m1zlVaN0zkc Reconnecting America advises civic and community leaders on how to overcome community development challenges to create better communities for all and develops research and innovative public policy, while also building on-the-ground partnerships and convening players needed to accelerate decision-making. Congressman Mica is a longtime critic of Amtrak, belittling it as a “Soviet style railroad” and a proponent of passenger rail privatization. Keeping Them Honest: NARP Answers Mica’s Claims in above hearing… narprail.org/news/narp-blog/2318-answering-mica Reconnecting America reconnectingamerica.org/ Apparently Mica has failed to read news reports that Britain’s “privatized railways” are still indeed very much supported by the public purse, even highly successful services like Virgin Trains on the West Coast Mainline receive capital subsidies for major infrastructure improvements. Network Rail the non-profit corporation that owns the tracks the private train operating companies run on is essentially a public corporation, the new “British Rail”. The only passenger train service in the UK to come close to making a “profit” on its “fully allocated costs” was the East Coast intercity franchise… which today is actually operated directly by the government (Department of Transport) opposed to private franchise operators like Virgin Trains, Stagecoach, and FirstGroup. The Guardian: East Coast rail service costs taxpayers less than private lines, report reveals guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/18/east-coast-rail-line-taxpayer-subsidy The Guardian: OpEd - Re-privatising East Coast rail company makes no sense guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/20/reprivatising-east-coast-rail-makes-no-sense
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 03:56:49 +0000
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